Veblen's Instinct of Workmanship pg 73-84

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In this section, Veblen states by talking about the impact of portraying mechanical and biological material as having human purpose in the form of anthropomorphism. He writes that this type of activity can have harmful or degrading impact in terms of humans working with mechanical type materials.  He is less negative about the impact on biological life.  In fact, he essentially argues that there may even be some beneficial impacts from a certain type of anthropomorphism when working with plants and animals.


As a point of reference, I can see how Clarence Ayres would interpret Veblen as saying there is a strict dichotomy between technology and ceremony.  While Veblen's words do allow for some degree of nuance, it must be remarked that he is generally of mind that humans make more progress,especially in the mechanical arts, when anthropomorphism and other ceremonial or even religious ways of thinking or habits of mind are reduced or eliminated. That said, it is also clear that Veblen is often talking in terms of degrees or relative amounts of one thing or another and not strictly in a binary or dichotomous manner. Veblen does make a number of remarks that women are more attuned to this type of thinking, especially in working with natural or biological material, than men. I am not versed enough in feminist economics to know how to interpret these statements but it is noteworthy.


Veblen clearly believes and writes that a spiritual or anthropomorphic attitudes in the mechanical arts is disservicable or unproductive.  He writes that, “the propensity to a teleological interpretation seems to have been nearly decisive against technological progress in the primary and indispensable mechanical arts (Veblen, 1904, pg 81) and again “in the later phases of culture, where anthropomorphic interpretation of workmanship have been worked out into a rounded system of magic and religion, they have at times brought the technological advance to a  full stop” (veblen 1904, pg 81). We can see why Ayres would take the view that he did from Veblen.


This section certainly points to at least a type of Veblen contrast or dichotomy between technology and ceremony. Whether Ayres interpreted Veblen is probably not the right question but rather Ayres took what he felt was important or needed for his own way of thinking and combined it with other thinkers.  Veblen certainly does talk about the issue of how workmanship can be contaminated, sometimes in very negative ways, by what he terms spiritual or ceremonial attitudes although it differed in his mind between purely inanimate and animate matter.

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